January 19, 2012

Eat That Frog!

Issue No. 241 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a best-selling book for your weekly Procrastinators Anonymous self-help group. And in my bucket commentary this issue: why you should stop describing your workplace as a “family.” Plus, this reminder: check out my Management Buckets website with dozens of resources and downloadable worksheets for your staff meetings.

Procrastination Smorgasbord Antidotes

Stop whining about your overwhelming workload—and listen up! Author Brian Tracy has good news and bad news for you. “…the fact is that you are never going to get caught up. You will never get on top of your tasks. You will never get far enough ahead to be able to get to all those books, magazines, and leisure time activities that you dream of.”

The author and executive coach adds, “And forget about solving your time management problems by becoming more productive. No matter how many personal productivity techniques you master, there will always be more to do than you can ever accomplish in the time you have available to you, no matter how much it is.”

The good news? Frogs!

He quotes Mark Twain’s wit and wisdom, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

So Tracy serves up two frog rules and 21 ways to stop procrastinating and accomplish more in less time.

Frog Rule #1. “If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first.”

Frog Rule #2. “If you have to eat a live frog at all, it doesn’t pay to sit and look at it for very long.”

Time management books are a dime a dozen. So what’s different about this one—and why should you read it?

I recommend books that align with my 20 buckets (core competencies). They must also have alignment with the best leadership and management writers. The author references Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey and others whose works complement this must-read procrastination fix-it book.

I’ve mentioned before that my friend and mentor, George Duff, reads Drucker’s The Effective Executive (“know your time”) once a year. Covey’s four quadrant diagram in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is mentally tattooed on my forehead. A look in the mirror reminds me: Am I focused on the correct quadrant? Several clients report that Getting Things Done, by David Allen, has dramatically changed their daily productivity.

So…what do you read every year, especially in January, to keep yourself and your team members focused on Priority #1? Try Tracy’s book. You can read it in about 90 minutes (117 pages)—and the 21 short chapters with two “Eat That Frog!” next steps are perfect for a weekly “Procrastinators Anonymous” self-help meeting.

“Hi. My name is John and I’m a procrastinator. Please pass the donuts.”

If you’ve conquered procrastination, you will still find the 21 strategies valuable—especially as you coach others. “One strategy might be effective in one situation and another might apply to another task. All together, these 21 ideas represent a smorgasbord of personal effectiveness techniques that you can use at any time, in any order or sequence that makes sense to you at the moment.”

The one-liners are memorable—and poster-worthy: --“Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.” --“Just find out what other successful people do and do the same things until you get the same results. Learn from the experts.” --“One of the very worst uses of time is to do something very well that need not be done at all.” --“Before you begin scrambling up the ladder of success, make sure it is leaning against the right building.” (Stephen Covey) --“It only takes about 10 to 12 minutes for you to plan out your day, but this small investment of time will save you up to two hours (100 to 120 minutes) in wasted time and diffused effort throughout the day.” --“Resist the temptation to clear up small things first.” --“Time management is really life management, personal management. It is really taking control of the sequence of events.”

Idea: buy a dozen books to share with your team members. Delegate to a point person who will recruit people for five-minute chapter summaries at each of your next 21 staff meetings.

To order this book directly from Amazon, click on the graphic below for Eat That Frog! 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, by Brian Tracy. (And thanks to Bob Neill for this excellent recommendation!)

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:1) Somehow, we always get payroll out on time! Brian Tracy’s Law of Forced Efficiency says, “There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.” How effectively do you manage your time?2) Myth-buster! The author writes, “Under the pressure of deadlines, often self-created through procrastination, people suffer greater stress, make more mistakes, and have to redo more tasks than under any other conditions.” Have you believed the myth that you’re more productive under deadline pressures?

We Are NOT a Family! - Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Nonprofit

One of the big ideas in my book, Mastering the Management Buckets, is that leadership and management is complicated—and you need to balance all three legs of the three-legged stool: Cause, Community and Corporation.

I noticed an organization’s website recently that described their staff and board as a “family.” Oops! That works for a while (and wouldn’t it be wonderful?), until someone in the family (Community) gets fired (Corporation) because the team member, for example, was activity-driven versus results-driven (Cause).

Effective leaders maintain a delicate balance of all three legs on the stool—not just the family (Community) leg—and to ignore the other two legs invites more complicated problems sooner or later.

For a list of the 20 buckets (core competencies) grouped under the three legs of Cause, Community and Corporation, visit the The Bucket webpage.